Today is the big day. You know what I mean. Today the Jazz are bringing in a very exciting group of guys, and the results of this workout may be very edifying for the Jazz brass’ draft board. Yes, today we get the epic struggle between UCLA’s Malcolm Lee and UIC's Paul Cater. Uh, no disrespect to those two guys who combined to average 18.5 ppg – but the real show today is between UCONN’s Kemba Walker and BYU’s Jimmer Fredette (aka SLCDUNK’s community champion, according to the poll results). I’ve also included the info for Enes Kanter in this pile too – but I don’t know all the guys the Jazz looked at in Europe. If I ever get that list, I’ll add them to this ever-growing chart as well.
EDIT INFORMATION: Somehow I forgot about Senario Hillman (PG/SG from Alabama) and Josh Harrellson (PF/C from Kentucky) were also working out today. Ryan Feldman at TheHoopsReport didn’t list them, so I guess I should have instead read the local newspapers instead. As a result – the rest of this article has been changed to include their information.
Behold: all the crazy stats and junk, after the break!
Chicago Camp Measurements
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Paul Cater isn’t in the Database at DraftExpress.com so there’s not much here to go by. Furthermore, Kemba Walker didn’t shoot in any of the drills, so, yeah, he did everything else though. If he was confident that his shooting would help (or wouldn’t hurt) his draft stock perception I don’t think he would have opted out of that. Even guys who sucked at shooting participated in the drill, after all. So that’s something that stands out to me.
Anyway, here we see two PGs and two wings. Jimmer is the physically bigger point of the two. He’s taller, longer, but doesn’t quite have the same jumping ability (which hurts his max reach as well). That said, he has the size and bulk to finish in the paint with contact, which is a highly under rated quality. He benched twice as much and weighs more. Despite being 0.05 seconds slower in the sprint, the BYU dude displayed better lane agility. His longer wingspan and better mobility give (not to mention physical size if he’s ever allowed to body up guys driving) me hope that he’ll be an NBA defender one day – compared to Walker who may have to rely on perceived speed alone. Jimmer shot the lights out in the shooting drills. This is his best talent. And out of everyone so far interviewed, no one has been better. Kemba didn’t even shoot, preemptively losing this contest before it started.
Because Carter doesn’t have much to discuss here it would appear as though Malcolm Lee wins. I guess he does. He’s really fast, 3.09 second sprint fast. That’s Marshon Brooks fast. But unlike Brooks, he didn’t shoot well at the Chicago Camp, and he doesn’t have a 7’1 wingspan or crazy jump either. Brooks comes in on the 20th, by the way.
Traditional Statistics
Here are the traditional stats, I don’t know how seriously the Jazz brass are evaluating Lee and Carter for the draft – perhaps for summer league or training camp though. Kemba and Jimmer both played in highly visible games and both have over 110 games as far as sample sizes go. This workout may not really tell the brass anything they don’t already know though. Kemba is supposed to be this small, speedy guard who can do a lot of stuff like Tim Hardaway. Jimmer is some crazy mix of Dan Majerle’s range in Mark Price’s body.
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Jimmer scored more, and at a better rate. Kemba boarded more and had slightly more dimes. He also had half a steal more per game. The other two guys? Yeah, give me Jackson Emery instead . . . at least he can make his free throws and hit a three. I’m very wary of finesse position guys (PG, SG, and SF for the most part) who can’t make their FTs. Unless you are D Wade, not being dependable at the line can get you a lot of bench time as a guard in the 4th quarter.
Enes Kanter
I didn't write about him earlier because a single person workout is not much of a work out at all. Unless, of course you are Yi Jianlian. His career numbers as a 'pro' are horrible. Four games is a small sample size though. He has no 'college' numbers either. He does have a game where he played against no one his size though, that at lot of people are going ga-ga over. He seems to split the difference between Al Jefferson and Luis Scola. Do you go with the 'safe pick' at #3? Some people here seem to want him, provided it involves the automatic trade of one of our other existing bigs. Again, it's not an easy upgrade of a phone plan.
Senario Hillman and Josh Harrellson
This is stuff that was not in the first post, and my bad guys. I hope you had great workouts. Hillman is a guard who can’t shoot. I don’t know much about him but wouldn’t you rather invite that Flash PG to training camp instead of some unknown guy? How many rookie PGs does a team need? Josh is a smaller bigman. He’s not as small as Millsap, but he doesn’t seem very athletic at all. Out of all the guys we’ve brought in he was the slowest going North-South. He somehow had a better Lane Agility than some of the guards. I’m beginning to think that this year the Chicago camp had two different lane agility drills – one for bigs, and another for everyone else. (Similar to how the shooting drills were steamed as well, bigs shooting "threes" from only HS and NCAA distance, and everyone else from NBA and NCAA range) Statistically Harrellson did not impress. I guess he may be there as a moving target for post entry passes, and token defense in the paint.